Before the Media Research Center whined that the Trump administration was accused of reviving old Trump-Russia allegations as a way to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, it was whining that the Epstein scandal was being discussed at all. Mark Finkelstein did just that in a July 19 post:
If politics make strange bedfellows, it doesn’t get much stranger than this: Mika Brzezinski defending, and even praising, MAGA!
Mika, a down-the-line liberal Democrat and Morning Joe co-host, made her surprising comments on Wednesday’s show in the context of commenting on the Epstein case and MAGA’s demand that the investigation be pursued.
She began by describing MAGA as being about “lifting the rock on the entire ruling class, taking down these people who have truly controlled everything.” Echoes of Bernie and AOC!
Mika then rose to MAGA’s defense, condemning people who are “treating MAGA like they’re stupid.”
[…]Mika doesn’t have the purest of motives in defending MAGA. She’s surely hoping that continuing the Epstein investigation might uncover information damaging to President Trump.
Even so, it was stunning to hear Mika mouth such praise for MAGA—the same people that she and Joe Scarborough have been maligning for years as white supremacist supporters of Trump the fascist!
Tim Graham grumbled that non-right-wing media wouldn’t adhere to the right-wing narrative du jour instead of covering Epstein:
On Friday, ex-Biden White House deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini became the third key aide to take the Fifth Amendment, invoking her right against self-incrimination and declining to way whether Team Biden “instructed her to lie” about Biden’s health. Network coverage? Zip. Zilch. Zero.
[…]As usual, the networks have demonstrated a blatant double standard on what constitutes a White House scandal. From Monday through Friday, the evening newscasts on ABC, CBS, and NBC combined for more than half an hour (30 minutes, 22 seconds) on internal MAGA conflict over Justice Department disclosures about the probe into the late child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
ABC accounted for almost half the Epstein obsession (14 minutes, 51 seconds). NBC was second (nine minutes, 57 seconds) and CBS was third (six minutes, 34 seconds).
On Friday night, the sober and supposedly serious PBS News Hour wallowed in the trashy Epstein scandal-mongering for 13 minutes and 30 seconds. Washington Week with The Atlantic was even worse, with most of its program (17 and a half minutes) on Trump and Epstein.
Gee, we don’t recall Graham ever describing the right-wing obsession with Bill Clinton’s alleged affairs as “trashy.”
P.J. Gladnick further huffed about Epstein coverage:
Politico broke out the worry beads and furiously began rubbing them in deep concern over whether the Wall Street Journal‘s story about President Donald Trump supposedly sending Jeffrey Epstein a bawdy letter over twenty years ago would end up tossing Trump a “lifeline.”
In fact Politico was so concerned about this that their angst session was carried out in public via FIVE, count ’em, FIVE stories on whether the WSJ story would cause MAGA to rally around him. Of course, their real concern should be if the WSJ story even has any credibility at all.
[…]The only media people more worried about the ultimate veracity of the WSJ than the reporters and management of the WSJ would have to be the Politico folks. If this story turns out to be FAKE NEWS yet again, major egg on the faces at both media organizations.
Gladnick didn’t explain why a right-wing outlet owned by Rupert Murdoch should have its credibility questioned when we don’t recall him questioning the credibility of other right-wing outlets. Of course, he’s also fulfilling Politico’s prediction of MAGA rallying around Trump and trying to distract from Epstein.
Gladnick whined even more about Politico in a July 26 post:
Politico in its absolute obsession with pushing Jeffrey Epstein stories has broken its old record of five stories a few days ago and has now pushed out upon its readers six, six, SIX Epstein stories in a 24 hour period. A symptom of its laughable urgency to hopefully make its readers forget all about the Russia Hoax revelations by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
In fact, Politico has barely touched upon that more impactful scandal while shoveling up one Epstein story after another. It all makes one wonder if the Politico reporters are paid an Epstein bonus for writing about this same topic over and over and over again.
[…]And now we come to the last but best. Unlike the other Politico Epstein stories that end up boring the hell out of its readers, this SIXTH and final Epstein story of the 24 hour period is absolutely fascinating since it completely illustrates the pathos and desperation of Politico to push the Epstein story to such an absurd extent that they end up inadvertently humiliating themselves in the pages of a supposedly serious periodical about politics. The end result makes you truly realize that the “D” in TDS stands for “Derangement.”
So take a deep breath as we enter their 8:04 AM entry on Thursday by Paul Dallison who reveals where his potty mind is at in “South Park skewers Trump over Epstein files, depicts him in bed with Satan.”
Seems like Gladnick is even more obsessed with trying to distract from the Epstein story than Politico is in covering it.
Graham returned for further grumbling in a July 28 post:
“Public” broadcasting will always go after Trump, so their Week In Politics segment on Weekend Edition Saturday obsessed over Jeffrey Epstein.
At least anchor Scott Simon played a clip of Trump throwing shade on Bill Clinton (which NPR doesn’t want to address): “You know, you should focus on Clinton. You should focus on the president of Harvard, the former president of Harvard [Lawrence Summers, also Treasury Secretary under Clinton]. You should focus on some of the hedge fund guys. I’ll give you a list. These guys lived with Jeffrey Epstein. I sure as hell didn’t.”
Those Democrats were then immediately forgotten.
[…]This is one of those things that liberal journalists do that sounds like passive-aggressive bullying: “So we just happen to be endlessly linking you with a notorious sex-trafficker in story after story, with all those chummy photos. Gosh, how does this keep happening?” They wonder why people hate them.
Graham concluded with one more grumble: “But you have to laugh at the sound of this: Trump turned to an outdated “nearly 8-year-old controversy” when we’re trying to punish him with a birthday card he allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein 22 years ago.” Says the executive at an organization that can’t stop obsessing over Ted Kennedy and Chappaquiddick even though the incident happened more than 50 years ago and Kennedy himself has been dead for years.
Gladnick served up an Aug. 3 post gleefully touting how the Epstein scandal isn’t hurting Trump with his right-wing supporters:
Take note Politico.
EPSTEIN! EPSTEIN! EPSTEIN! It has been used so much that it is no longer effective according to Ed Kilgore of New Yorkmagazine. Much as Kilgore would like to see President Donald Trump’s popularity decline due to the media constantly trying to connect him with Jeffrey Epstein, it is just not working. Kilgore pretty much threw the towel into the ring on Thursday in “Why Trump’s Epstein Files Scandal May Not Be Hurting Him After All.”
[…]Well, at least you’ve given some very slim hope to the folks at Politico to keep their Epstein candle lit. However, since you mentioned Russiagate, it seems that now the media focus on Epstein primarily seems to be a desperate attempt to avoid covering the new documented revelations by DNI Tulsi Gabbard about Russiagate.
You mean like how the MRC is hyping “Russiagate” in a desperate attempt to avoid having to talk about Epstein?
And that was pretty much it for the MRC’s efforts to distract from Epstein, though an Aug. 29 post by Curtis Houck groused that an ABC interview with House speaker Mike Johnson was spent in part “harping on the Epstein File hubbub,” going on to sneer later that the scandal was something “which the left decided in mid-July to care about as they realized they could use it as a cudgel against Trump.”
Looks like the MRC is following the Fox News template in downplaying Epstein and glomming onto the Russia story as a distraction.